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11111111111111111111111111 Ill 0099900018 ©Malawi National Commission for UNESCO 2011 11111111111111111111111111 Ill 0099900018 ©Malawi National Commission for UNESCO 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information address: Malawi National Commission for UNESCO P. 0 Box 30278 Lilongwe 3 MALAWI ISBN ................. .. Printed and bound by .............................. .. TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. THE 9 TARGET GROUPS .............................................. 2.1 Chewa 2.2 Lambya 2.3 Lomwe 2.4 Ngonde 2.5 Ngoni 2.6 Sena 2.7 Tonga 2.8 Tumbuka 2.9 Yao 3. COMMON INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE ........... 3.1 ORAL TRADITIONS AND EXPRESSIONS 3.2 PERFORMING ARTS 3.3 SOCIAL PRACTICES, RITUALS AND FESTIVALS ... 3.4 KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES CONCERNING NATURE 3.5 TRADITIONAL CRAFTSMANSHIP APPENDIX .......................................................................... 2 PREFACE The importance of preserving one's culture cannot be overemphasized. A nation is identified by its cultural values, beliefs, customs and tradition. Cultural practices are meant to preserve, unite and develop the practicing community. While culture is dynamic as it drops outdated practices and picks up new and sometimes foreign ones, this process must happen without complete loss of the identity of a people. Elderly people are dying, thereby taking with them important cultural knowledge. We need to preserve these for the sake of future generations. Original dances, therapy, spiritual and harvesting festivities, marriages, funerals, initiations, installation, birth ceremonies, just to mention some, have to be documented and made known to the public. Besides, due to geographical and spatial separation, people living in different areas of the country are not knowledgeable of some cultural values, beliefs, customs and traditional dances, etc. as practiced by other ethnic groups. It is in recognition of this need that the Malawi National Commission for UNESCO in collaboration with Department of Culture embarked on the Documentation of National Inventory of Malawi's Intangible Cultural Heritage. The exercise was aimed at capturing different aspects of Malawi's Intangible Cultural Heritage with a view to raise public awareness on the same in order to safeguard them for national identity, unity in diversity and community development. Due to resource limitations the exercise targeted the common heritage of the nine out of 17 ethnic groups, namely: Lambya, Ngonde, Tumbuka, Ngoni, Tonga, Chewa, Yao, Lomwe and Sena. It is hoped that subsequent volumes will target the rest of the remaining ethnic groups. This inventory though not representative of all the ethnic groups in Malawi will help raise public awareness on the importance of culture to the socio-economic life of the counh·y and hence the need to preserve it. It shall assist stakeholders 3 and policy makers on the need to prioritize protection of cultural heritage and a basis for recognizing cultural identity among different ethnic groups in Malawi. Lastly, the inventory shall be permanent testimony of intangible cultural heritage of different ethnic groups in Malawi to future generations. Francis R Mkandawire EXECUTIVE SECRETARY 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors wish to extend their gratitude to all those people who were consulted and conh·ibuted in one way or the other, at various stages, to the development of this document. The authors are particularly indebted to the UNESCO Secretariat, through the UNESCO Cluster Office in Zimbabwe for providing the necessary financial support to conduct the documentation exercise and publish the first volume of the inventory. Many thanks also go to Dr. Elizabeth Gomani-Chindebvu, Director of Culture, Mr. Bernard Kwilimbe, Deputy Director of Culture in the Ministry of Tourism Wildlife and Culture responsible for Arts and Crafts for their input during the period of consultation and Mr. Paul Lihoma, Deputy Director of Culture responsible for National Archives and the staff of Department of National Archives for accepting to open their offices during the weekend to allow access to reference materials. Last but not least, most sincere gratitude also go to the custodians of our heritage, the traditional authorities, too numerous to mention each one, as well as men and women practitioners for their unwavering support and for organising themselves to share information on as well as demonstrate some of the heritage aspects documented in here. 5 1. INTRODUCTION According to the UNESCO World Commission on Culture and Development, heritage is the whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or a social group. It consists of both cultural and natural. Heritage is therefore, seen as what people have chosen to give and what the receiver wants to inherit. It can be natural or cultural, tangible or intangible. It includes not only arts and letters but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of a human being, value systems, h·aditions and beliefs. Cultural heritage will include things that have resulted from spiritual things e.g. churches, material evidence, emotional features such as graveyards etc. It also includes movable cultural objects e.g. ethnographic materials, archaeological objects, archival and library materials and works of art. Immovable cultural objects such as monuments, sacred/historical sites, prehistoric sites, structures like bridges, roads, cemeteries; expressive activities such as language, music and dance as well as drama and intangible heritage such as skills, folklores, rituals, intellectual property rights, beliefs, h·aditions and customs are all part of cultural heritage. The natural heritage consists of both flora and fauna of the area plus the splendid spectacular features e.g. islands, mountains, canyons, waterfalls and geysers such as hot springs. In many societies, religious beliefs are shaped by the things found in an area such as water, mountains, rivers, etc. The "Intangible Cultural Heritage" refers to the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural aspects associated thereof that communities, groups and in some cases individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible heritage, which is transmitted from one generation to another is constantly recreated by the communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction 6 with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity of human creativity. 2. IMPORTANCE OF INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE Intangible heritage have a crucial role to play in the development of the society and nation as a whole. Firstly, intangible heritage is used as medium of oral communication such as in singing and dancing. They are also a source of knowledge in cases where there is no written work. Oral performances are like moving libraries. Intangible heritage is a source of national or societal identity and prestige. Intangible heritage is also a very effective means of passing information on sensitive matters such as HIV/AIDS. Besides it is also used in the production of audio-visual teaching and training materials. Intangible heritage provides the moral code i.e. the laws that govern the behaviour of the society. This behaviour is normally covered by taboos that instill fear in the people not to do certain things for fear of misfortunes, diseases etc. Rituals provide medium for formal insh·uctions on certain aspects of a particular society. Lastly but not least, intangible heritage promotes, protects and safeguards cultural heritage. Despite the role intangible heritage plays in the development of the society, it took time for people to realize its importance and the need to safeguard it. Intangible heritage (oral tradition) was not regarded important because mostly this heritage is associated with poor nations. However, it is pleasing to note that the Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage was finally adopted by the General Assembly of UNESCO on 17th October 2003. This adoption came about as a result of realization that the value attached to an object is not meaningful unless the non-material aspects (intangible values) are also preserved. This project is about the development of national inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Malawi. 7 3. LIMITATIONS OF DOCUMENTATION EXERCISE Due to limited time spent in the field owing to limited resources, it was not possible to visit every place among all the nine ethnic groups planned in order to have a wider coverage of the various aspects of our intangible heritage. Therefore, this inventory is by no means comprehensive or representative of all the rich cultural diversity that this country is endowed with. Nevertheless it will provide a starting point in our efforts to thoroughly document and safeguard Malawi's Intangible Cultural Heritage. 4. THE NINE TARGET ETHNIC GROUPS There are about 17 different ethnic groups in Malawi found across the 28 districts of Malawi (see Figure 1). All groups belong to one major African group of people called the Bantu. The Bantu are also found in other counh·ies
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